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Excessive Linking From Home Page

Is there such a thing, and how can it be avoided?

         

Go60Guy

4:54 am on Dec 20, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I’m not a professional webmaster, simply developing websites as both a labor of love and to conduct ecommerce for my own account. As I develop more and more sites, I feel a growing apprehension and frustration about how to link to new sites from my established sites without risking a PR penalty.

Mind you, I have enough sites with PR6 pages so that it isn’t necessary for me to cross-link sites. I can do plenty of one directional links.

We all know, however, that a link from the home page of a high PR site can transmit good PR to another site/page. The trouble is that as I develop more sites, it becomes cumbersome to link to them with anchor text, etc., from the home page.

Moreover, I think you ought to be able to mention to your visitors on any given website other masterpieces you’ve created with impunity. Sadly, spammers have made this somewhat risky in the SE game.

All this said, I’m thinking that a way to tackle this might be to place a link on the home page called something like “Our Other Sites” linking to a content page describing your other works.

The new page could say something along the lines of:

“OTHER MIND BENDING WEBSITES CREATED BY…..

If you’ve enjoyed your visit here at Clever-Widgetry.Com [team-MP8.com], we suggest that you’ll find our many other sites equally, if not more, captivating. Following our of our trip to Patagonia, we became absorbed in the history of navy blue wiglets, out of which grew Navy-Blue-Wiglets.Com [team-MP8.com].

We also hope you'll be delighted to visit:…

1…etc.
2…etc.”

In other words, the page would be what journalists would call a “puff piece” extolling the virtues of all of your online works of genius. It would be in the form of narrative, textual content in which all the links are embedded in context in one way or another. Google should love this. Moreover, you could link to this page from the menu of every page on your site. Assuming you have a high PR site, this page should also gain high PR. That way, you can both help your visitors to find your other sites and help your other sites (compelling of course in their subject matter) with a PR boost.

Lastly it eliminates the need to dilute links on your home page and to take on whatever risks may be associated with excessive linking from the home page.

Does this make any sense? Or am I tilting at windmills? All comments will be appreciated, including “Please go away and don’t bother us anymore”.

andreasfriedrich

5:04 am on Dec 20, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



“Please go away and don’t bother us anymore”. ;)

jimbeetle

5:31 am on Dec 20, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



I whoehearteldy agree with Andreas. You really do have too many good PR sites to ask this question. Obviously, you know what you're doing in your market.

But I'll give it a shot anyway. From what I've seen:

--IF you are "Big National Corporation" linking to individual product domains (on the same server!), you're okay. And you can link back and forth from every page in "Product Domain" to "National Domain" with no penalty.

--IF you're not "Big National" but somewhat smaller, linking to distinctly different product domains, it appears that you're also okay.

--UNLESS, of course, you repeat any of the same content, photos, etc. One of your competitors somewhere along the line will file a spam report.

And look at the possibility of linking to the other sites through internal pages instead of the home pages, unless they conflict, in which case you might have identified a potential problem.

And efforts might be better spent on the 4 or 5 gray bar sites. If all is kosher that will only serve to reinforce PR all the way around.

And "mind bending?" Only certain things do that for me. Might be best to stay away from the superlatives. (And I hope you take this in good humor).

Jim

fathom

6:39 am on Dec 20, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Personally I only go with copyright statements. If the visitor has any interest at all you will not need to remind them to go your other sites. Obviously this can become a big eye-sore if large number of domains are added:

But quite professional if a few, something like:


Widgetery.com is a brand website of
Widget World Incorporated.
World World is a developer of widgets [widgetery.com], and owner of
web sites: Homemade Widgets [homemadewidgets.com] and Widget Designs [widget-design.com].

Widget World Incorporated
10 Widget Road, Widgetville, WidgetLand, 12345
Toll Free: 1-888-888-8888, Facsimile: 1 (888) 888-0000

info@widgetry.com [widgetry.com]

Copyright © 2002 Widget World Inc. All rights reserved.